Open Data Can Tell You the Worst Place to Park

Data scientist Ben Wellington, runs his own blog about New York using the city's own open data. He believes that while the Big Apple's open data portal is good, it could be so much better. 

Much of the city's data is public, but not public enough. Certain things, like the GPS data from the city's taxis are requested through open-records laws over and over again. Other important information, including crime data and the city budget are 'entombed' in PDF format, preventing users from easily analyzing. While there are work-arounds (some citizens even developed programs to scrape the data from PDFs) this format prevents the data from being truly public and ultimately helping the city. 

During his research, Wellington examined which fire hydrants in New York City caused the most parking tickets due to cars parking in front of them. He found that the most frequently ticketed fire hydrant was garnering the city nearly $30,000 in fines a year.

While researching this problematic parking space, he discovered confusing parking lines near the fire hydrant that would indicate the space was OK to park in. The NYPD, however, disagreed. 

After Wellington highlighted the confusing parking space on his blog, the city's Department of Transportation repainted the spot to mark it more clearly as no-parking zone.

"A lot of people see open data as about being watchdog," he said. "It's not. It's about being a partner. We can empower our citizens to be better partners for government."

To learn more about NYC's open data check out the video from Socrata's Open Data TV, below: 

(Image via Sean Pavone/ Shutterstock.com)